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Lawrence Boadt provides this excellent
introduction to the book of Ruth: The Book of Ruth appears in our Bibles right after the
Book of Judges because its heroine is an ancestor of King David, whose story is
told in the following Books of 1 and 2 Samuel. It tells of an Israelite woman,
Naomi, who marries a Moabite man and goes to live in his country. They have two
sons who marry local Moabite women. But soon Naomi loses her husband and both
sons in death, and she decides to return home to Israel. One daughter-in-law,
Ruth, although a Moabitess, decides to follow Naomi and serve her needs, even though she would be far from her own people. In this
way Ruth gives a charming example of filial respect and care that eventually
leads to her fortunate marriage with Boaz, the leading citizen of Naomi’s
hometown of Bethlehem. From their marriage will come the house of David. The one thing that is certain about this book is that the
story comes from a time long after the period of the judges. Like…

As if the rest of the book of Judges was not
strange enough, the last five chapters of the book become “curiouser and curiouser,”
to quote Lewis Carroll. In chapter 17, we have the story of an Ephraimite named
Micah who steals 1100 pieces of silver from his mother, but then his honesty
gets the better of him and he tells her what he has done. The mother, in turn,
dedicates the silver to the Lord, but amazingly, she does this for the purpose
of making an idol of cast metal. Beginning with this idol, Micah forms a shrine
and installs one of his sons as priest. The author/editor of Judges comments on
this tale, “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what
was right in their own eyes.” (Judges 17:6) Obviously, the author/editor of the
book of Judges is writing from the perspective of many years later when there
is a king in Israel. He sees the problem with the time of the judges as being
that the Israelites did not have a king, they did not have a central governing
…

Once again in Judges 13, the cycle repeats: the
Israelites do evil in the sight of the Lord and the Lord gives them into the
hand of the Philistines, this time for forty years. However, God in his grace
does not leave the Israelites alone forever. He raises up yet another judge to
deliver them from the Philistines. This time it is the most well known (to us) judge of
all: Samson. With the entrance of Samson on the scene we are
led to expect that he will be a holy man, unlike some of those judges who have
gone before him. Samson’s conception is apparently miraculous because his
mother has been barren up to this time. This follows a theme of miraculous
births in the Torah, like that of Isaac. Furthermore, Samson is to be a
Nazirite, dedicated to the Lord from birth. According to Numbers 6, the
Nazirite was never to touch grapes or anything to do with them, like wine. The
Nazirite was never to shave his head. Thirdly, the Nazirite was not to touch a
dead body. However, Samson turns out to …

The judges over Israel seem to get worse as we go
along. Gideon was not half bad, but his son Abimelech, who also rules as a
judge after his father, is much worse. Abimelech kills his seventy brothers.
Talk about sibling rivalry! Abimelech rules over Israel for three years, but
God does not let him get away with evil for very long. In the end, Abimelech
dies in battle when a woman drops a millstone from a tower and crushes his
skull with it. Still, Abimelech is proud enough that he does not want to die at
the hand of a woman so as he is gasping for his last breath he asks his young armor-bearer to run him through with the
sword. It is interesting how evil children sometimes
come from good parents. Just because a parent is a good person that does not
guarantee their children will be good. Everyone must make his or her own
choices. In this regard, Abimelech is a preview of what is to come in the time
of the kings of Israel. Many of the wicked kings, unfortunately, come from
fathers who a…

Lawrence Boadt continues his summary of the book
of Judges…. The editors who recorded these traditions saw that the
period of the judges represented a spirit of compromise with the pagan culture
of the land. It was the greatest sin of the tribes and one which would be
repeated again and again in Israel’s later history. For this reason, the
editors repeatedly used a pattern to describe the period: the people sin, bring down Yahweh’s wrath upon themselves, later
repent, are delivered by a judge sent by God, and finally gain peace while the
judge lives. Naturally the real history of the times was much more complex,
with many ups and downs that are not recorded in this book. It seems that most
of the stories we do have involved only a few tribes and came from local
memories rather than from wars waged by Israel as a whole. These were passed on
orally at first among the tribes, and some have developed into full-blown hero
legends in which the judge is bigger and more glorious than any norma…

Lawrence Boadt provides this introduction to the book of
Judges: The Book of Judges continues the story of Israel’s
conquest and gradual occupation of the whole land. It tells the stories and
legends of Israel’s time of tribal life in Palestine which lasted about two
hundred years, from 1250 down to a little after 1050 B.C. Altogether, the book follows the exploits of twelve
judges during this period. Six are hardly more than names attached to a single
incident only barely remembered: Shamgar, Tola, Jair, Ibzan, Elon and Abdon. As
a result these are usually called the “Minor Judges.” The other six are the
“Major Judges”: Othniel, Ehud, Barak (with Deborah), Gideon, Jephthah and
Samson. They were renowned for their brave exploits in battle and were really
not legal judges primarily but warlords. They were leaders who arose in times
of great need and led the tribes to victory in one or more battles. Because God
had marked them out charismatically, they stayed on to guide the tribes during…

Putting together Joshua 20 and 21, we see that
the six cities of refuge were among the forty-eight cities provided for the
Levites. The Levites and the Simeonites did not receive their own separate inheritance
of land, as did the other ten tribes of Israel. This was due to a curse. They
were cursed because they had slaughtered the Shechemites whom we read about
back in Genesis 34. However, by God’s grace, the Simeonites were
allowed to dwell in a portion of land belonging to Judah. And apparently,
because of the Levites faithfulness in carrying out God’s judgment in Exodus
32, God reversed the curse upon them and turned it into a blessing. The Levites were scattered throughout the
Promised Land and had no inheritance of their own. However, the Lord used that
scattering to make them a blessing to their fellow Israelites. Every city where
the Levites lived became a center of worship and propagation of God’s law, the guidelines for living that
had been entrusted to the Levites. If the Lord …

The Israelites failed repeatedly to claim their
inheritance. In Joshua 17:12-13 we read, “Yet the Manassites were not able to
occupy these towns, for the Canaanites were determined to live in that region.” The Israelites failed to fully claim their
inheritance, but not because there was any lack of power supplied to them from
God. The Lord was absolutely faithful in all his promises to them, as we will
read in Joshua 21:43-45. Is this also a picture of us? I wonder: in what
ways do we fail to claim the promises of God? The good news is that there is still time to
claim God’s promises. We need to stop procrastinating and become faithful
finishers. Joshua reproved the Israelites for their
procrastination in claiming their inheritance. In Joshua 18:1-3 we read: Then the whole congregation of the Israelites assembled
at Shiloh, and set up the tent of meeting there. The land lay subdued before
them. There remained among the Israelites seven tribes whose
inheritance had not yet been apportioned. …

Lawrence Boadt has a good summary of Joshua
13-22…. The stage is now set for his [Joshua's] division of the land among
the tribes which follows in chapters 13-22. Many readers regard these chapters
as among the most uninteresting sections of the Bible with long lists of town
and place names, but they contain invaluable help to the historian and
geographer in locating many ancient cities and identifying the boundaries of
the tribes who lived in Palestine. However, we must be cautious about the Book of Joshua’s
account of Israel’s invasion of the land. For one thing, the land area that
Joshua captures is far less than the land he divides among the tribes. No
mention is made in chapters 2-12 about taking Shechem or the central hill
country, nor of capturing any cities on the coastal plains, nor of taking many
major cities in the Jezreel Valley in the north. Despite his victories over the
kings of some major strongholds such as Megiddo, Taanach and Gezer, short
references in the second …

About Me

is a pastor and author. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama from the University of California at San Diego and a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary. Will is the Pastor of Stowe Community Church in Stowe, Vermont. He and his wife Becky have been married since 1988 and have three sons: James, Jonathan, and Joshua.